Donald Trump’s election as president has quickly become a moment for self-reflection about how mainstream news outlets missed one of the most stunning political upsets of all time – and whether they helped cause it.

The questions among media critics range from whether news organizations offered Mr. Trump an unfair glut of “free media,” whether they gave him too much of a pass in search of “false balance” and whether newspaper endorsements actually matter anymore.

But the deeper issue the media is confronting is if any amount of hard-hitting coverage – on either candidate – could break through and change voters’ minds in a fractured, polarized media environment.

News outlets are contending with a media landscape where social media platforms are helping to drive people into echo chambers, as users see posts from like-minded friends and hyper-partisan, often fake news stories spread quickly. Getting through to voters with negative information about their favored candidate or positive information about the opponent is getting harder, particularly as trust in the news business at large is dimming.

Only 18% of Americans trust the information they get from national news outlets “a lot,” according to a Pew Research Center survey this year. By party, Democrats are far more trusting -- 27% trust the national media a lot, compared to just 15% of Republicans.

That dynamic was perhaps laid bare by the voters this cycle after an unprecedented number of editorial boards across the country, some at traditionally conservative papers, endorsed Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Trump.

These trends –
Facebook’s
growing clout, voter polarization, the internet’s propensity for questionable viral news stories and deep mainstream media mistrust – are all well-known, frequent topics of conversation in the media world, which makes the industry’s complete misfire in this election all the more astonishing.

Despite the critique that the media pulled punches, students of this campaign will look back and find plenty of hard-hitting stories on both candidates. Outlets like the
New York Times,
CNN, The Wall Street Journal and Washington Post covered Mr. Trump’s alleged unwanted advances toward women, questionable practices at his charitable foundation, and controversy over his taxes, among many other areas. They also took Mrs. Clinton to task, especially over her private email server and issues centered around the Clinton Foundation.

But mainstream media outlets – beset with business challenges like cracks in the pay TV business, the significant decline in print advertising dollars and looming challenges in the online ad economy – are left scratching their heads about whether their scoops and endorsements had the impact they imagined.

Mr. Trump’s supporters, of course, have had just as many grievances with the mainstream media for failing to take his campaign seriously and for discounting the distress that fueled his candidacy. Those complaints were underscored by the rise of “alt right” outlets like Breitbart News, which is now poised for an expansion in the U.S. and abroad, according to Reuters.

NBC’s Chuck Todd argued there was a cultural disconnect in understanding the Trump phenomenon: “Journalists who got it first were the ones who don’t inhabit the Northeast Washington-New York City corridor,” he wrote. The New York Times’ chief television critic James Poniewozik wrote while that may be true, a more diverse press corp would have “been less likely to deflect so much of the overt racism, misogyny and anti-Semitism on the campaign trail as ‘economic anxiety.’”

CNN President Jeff Zucker acknowledged that CNN made a mistake in putting too many of Mr. Trump’s campaign rallies on TV last year. “You never knew what he was going to say, so there was an attraction in letting it run,” Mr. Zucker said at an event last month at Harvard University, according to the Harvard Crimson. Still, Mr. Zucker said Mr. Trump’s “free media” advantage also simply reflected that he was far more available for interviews than other candidates.

As he proved more and more a ratings boon for cable networks, critics argued that outlets treated Mr. Trump’s campaign with kid gloves.

“The press covered Hillary Clinton like the next president of the United States. The press covered Donald Trump like a future trivia question (and a ratings cash cow),” Mr. Poniewozik wrote.

The issue of “false balance” came up frequently during the campaign, and some observers argued that the press felt a need to compensate for negative stories about Mr. Trump with critical articles about Mrs. Clinton (which Trump supporters often argued did not receive enough attention.)

Margaret Sullivan, media columnist at the Washington Post, wrote that the media “helped [Mr. Trump] tremendously” thanks to “ridiculous emphasis put on every development about Hillary Clinton’s email practices, including the waffling of FBI Director James B. Comey.”

As news companies embark on their post-mortems, social giants like Facebook, Snapchat and
Twitter
may also want to look inward about their roles in shaping public opinion during the campaign, even if they prefer to think of themselves as tech companies rather than powerful media behemoths.

Corrections & Amplifications: A survey from Pew Research Center found that 18% of Americans trust the information they get from national news outlets “a lot.” An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that 18% trusted the information. (Nov. 10, 2016)

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